As those who attended our wedding this summer may have noticed, I am a great proponent of hats. Hats (and I am talking about proper hats, not the baseball cap or similar creations) brighten the day as you pass them in the street.

Back in the day, when I was a conscientious member of environmental organisations, I opposed the culture that sets too great a store by clothing. I parroted the idea that it does not really matter how things look, as long as they wear well and keep you warm. Truth to tell, I never really believed it. It was only the only expression I had come across of an opposition to a fashion culture which was focused on intense consumerism. I wanted to object to the demand that one should wear clothes only because they were fashionable, and then throw them away in order to buy other clothes as soon as the fashion changed.

Bound up with this, I also objected to the idea of spending a lot of money on clothes. I took great pride in wearing jackets that cost 50 nok (about £5), and never having paid more than £20 for any other item of clothing. Again, this was to a great extent due to an impression that what cost money was the "newness" of the item of clothing. And to a certain extent that is true.

What my younger self disregarded, in part because I had not really had any real experience with shops that were not high street chains or charity shops, and in part because (I confess) of a propensity for binary thinking (good/bad, cheap/expensive) which simply meant I inverted the values everyone around me seemed to use, was the aesthetic experience of beautifully dressed people.

I have always favoured this, and it was this that